Author 



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Title 



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Class. 



Book .^.2».S. 



Imprint. 



J6— 47372-1 GPO 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE STATE TO PROVIDE FOR THE EDU- 
CATION OP ITS CITIZENS; THE EXTENT OF THE OBLIGA- 
TION: AND THE GROUNDS ON WHICH IT RESTS. 



EDUCATION AND THE STATE 



^I^ A.DDIIES8 



DBLIVBKBD BEFORE THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITT OF' THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

AT THEIR FIRST ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, HELD IN THE 

STATE CAPITOL AT ALBANY, 



JULY 10, 1879, 



/ 



FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, S.T.D., LL.D., L.H.D., 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE ', 

Member of the National Academy of Sciences ; Member of the American Philosophical Society , 

Associate Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences ; Corresponding 

Member of the Royal Society of Sciences of Liege, Belgium ; 

Officer of. the Legion of Honor. 




NEW YORK : 
The S. W. Green Type-Setting Machines; 18 Jacob Street. 

1879. 



'M 






ADDRESS 



Mr. Chancellor : 

It was on the 25th day of November, 1783, that the 
British troops under Sir Guy Carleton withdrew from the 
city of ISTew York. Thus ended the last act in the trag- 
edy of blood and fire, which for seven anxious years had 
filled the country with gloom. On the same day the 
Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, 
accompanied by his Excellency, George Clinton, Governor 
of the State of 'New York, made his entrance into the 
city. Salvoes of artillery, fired from the Battery, wel- 
comed his arrival, and saluted the star-spangled banner 
as it went up on the flag-staff of Fort George. 

The heavily afflicted city breathed once more freely. 

Almost in the very beginning of the struggle this un- 
happy town had fallen into the possession of the enemy, 
and during the long period of hostile occupation which 
followed, it had suffered far more than the ordinary mis- 
eries attendant on military rule. Even in the hour of 
its downfall, and while the shame and grief of its humil- 
iation were still fresh, there fell upon it a new and fright- 
ful disaster, which to the pain of subjugation superadded 
the menace of an immediate and more material distress. 

It was the 20th of November, 1776, a date memorably 
dismal in the annals of New York. The hour was mid- 
night. The newly arrived and exultant troops of Howe 
had just reached their camping ground on the north-east- 



ern limit of the city, and were still engaged in pitching 
their tents, when a vast cloud of smoke arose upon the 
southern horizon. Tongues of fire were presently seen 
shooting up in the neighborhood of Whitehall Landing, 
and, directly after, an immense sheet of flame spread 
rapidly from river to river, and sweeping along the great 
central thoroughfare through the heart of the district in 
which the wealth, the refinement, and whatever of archi- 
tectural beauty the city might have to boast, were con- 
centrated, reduced, in a few brief hours, the whole region 
extending from the Bowling Green on the south to the 
streets above St. Paul' s on the north, to a waste of black 
and smoking ruins. Of the better class of citizens, a 
fourth part were left houseless in one night, and of their 
accumulated wealth a large proportion had vanished in 
smoke and flame. 

Through all the sad years that followed, no hand was 
lifted to repair the desolation, or to remove its dishearten- 
ing evidences from sight. Neither motive nor encourage- 
ment existed to stimulate the attempt. With the mili- 
tary occupation all the, arts of peace had been paralyzed, 
all commerce, foreign and domestic, extinguished, and 
the spirit of enterprise was thoroughly broken. 

But, miserable as was the aspect of this doomed and 
blasted quarter, the plight of that portion of the town 
which the conflagration had spared was not much better ; 
so that, when, at last, the exiled patriots who had seven 
years previously fled in haste at the approach of Howe, 
returned to their long deserted and now dilapidated 
dwellings, the melancholy spectacle which met their eyes 
filled them with a sadness which even the remembrance 
of their newly established liberties could not dispel. 

With the restoration of the legitimate authority of the 
State came the return of hope and some slight renewal of 



activity ; but it was only by slow and almost impercepti- 
ble degrees that the stricken town recovered the visible 
semblance of its earlier prosperity. When, therefore, six 
weeks later, the Legislature of the State of New York as- 
sembled for the first time in its constitutional capital, it 
was under the influence of the depressing scene I have 
endeavored imperfectly to describe, that it entered on its 
labors. By what means most speedily to lift up the pros- 
trate prosperity of the country, was the question which 
swallowed up every other in the anxious thoughts of the 
members. For not the city only, but the entire common- 
wealth, had sunk down in a common ruin. The exigen- 
cies of the war had drained its resources to exhaustion. 
All industries were stagnant. Agriculture alone main- 
tained a feeble vitality. The public credit was at the 
lowest ebb, and private credit had ceased to exist, A 
worthless legal tender medium of exchanges gave to every 
ordinary business transaction the character of a game of 
chance, and arrested completely the operations of gen- 
eral commerce. 

Such was the state of things when the first message of 
the Governor after the peace was laid before the assembled 
Legislature. This message shows the profound conviction 
of the Chief Magistrate that, of all the calamities which 
war had brought with it, there were none greater than the 
ignorance which the dispersion of the colleges and the 
closing of the schools had entailed upon the rising genera- 
tion. Among the matters of pressing urgency which, in 
the low state of the public fortunes, seemed to call for 
early consideration, none in his mind could take prece- 
dence of this ; and therefore, after reverently acknowledg- 
ing the favor of an overruling Providence by which the 
seal had been put to the national independence, and indi- 
cating the principal matters of public concern requiring 



immediate legislative action, he continued in the follow- 
ing memorable words : 

' ' IN'eglect of the edncation of youth is among the evils 
consequent on war. Perhaps there is scarce anything 
more worthy of your attention than the revival and en- 
couragement of seminaries of learning ; and nothing by 
which we can more satisfactorily express our gratitude to 
the Supreme Being for his past favors ; since piety and 
virtue are generally the offspring of an enlightened un- 
derstanding." 

This wise recommendation of the Governor received the 
prompt approval of both Houses. A bill was speedily 
introduced, and on the first day of May following was 
passed into a law, providing, among other things, "/br 
erecting an University within this State. ^^ In this act 
are delineated the features of an organization the most 
comprehensive in its plan of all the educational instru- 
mentalities yet created on this continent. Under it has 
grown up, during the century which has since elapsed, 
the si)lendid system of superior and secondary education 
of which we have so much reason to be proud ; and which 
places JSTew York in many respects so far in advance of 
her sister States. 

The original act was found in some respects imperfect ; 
but chiefl.y in the respect that it was complicated by the 
attempt to combine the principle of general supervision 
with the special administration of the affairs of particular 
institutions. These imperfections were remedied by sub- 
stituting for it, three years later, a more perfect law, 
carefully ]3repared by the accomplished scholar and far- 
seeing statesman, Alexander Hamilton. Under this more 
perfect law was constituted the university of to-day — the 
organization which, nearly at the close of a century of 
signal and uninterrupted usefulness, has gathered its 



Mends together, including among them many who have 
enjoyed, or who have assisted in distributing, its benefits, 
to unite with it on this occasion in inaugurating a new 
era in its history. 

Honored by the Regents of the University with an invi- 
tation to deliver an address approxDriate to the occasion 
of their first annual commencement, it has seemed to me 
that I could best discharge this duty by devoting the 
hour allotted to me to the discussion of a topic partly sug- 
gested by a consideration of the functions which they 
themselves fulfil in our educational system, and partly 
by the discordant views of educational questions which I 
have encountered from time to time in the public jour- 
nals. 

This topic is the relation of the State to education — 
the obligation of the State to provide for the education 
of its citizens — the extent of the obligation — and the 
grounds on. which it rests. 

The question. What is the duty of the State towards 
education 1 has never been distinctly settled to the uni- 
versal satisfaction. It has been debated very generally 
upon grounds more sentimental than logical, especially 
by those whose views of the subject are most liberal. 
With such, the elevating influence of education, the dig- 
nity of the human intellect and the necessity of culture 
to its development, the abject condition of a community 
where ignorance prevails, and the vice which usually fol- 
lows in the train of ignorance, are fruitful themes of 
plausible argument. Such considerations show very con- 
clusively that education is a good thing, but they prove 
nothing clearly as to the duty of the government in regard 
to it. Health, piety, temperance are good things, but it 
does not follow that the government should establish 
agencies to make men pious, healthy, or temperate. 



8 

Moreover, the elevating influence of education is not strik- 
ingly perceptible, except where the process has been car- 
ried far ; so that the weight of this argument applies 
mainly to that higher education which can be the privi- 
lege only of the few. 

As to the importance of education, however, whether to 
the welfare of the State or the well-being of the individ- 
ual, opinions are not at all divided. That provision ought 
to be somehow made for the education of the young, is 
matter of common agreement. But to what extent the 
State should charge itself with this important interest, 
should devise the systems and establish the institutions of 
education, should exact and enforce the attendance of the 
individuals who are to be educated, and should defray 
the cost attending these operations, are questions in re- 
gard to which intelligent persons widely differ. It is 
not even universally agreed that the State should concern 
itself with the matter at all. There are radicals who hold 
that education is a purely individual interest, with which 
the State has nothing to do, and with which it should not 
meddle. There are extremists opposed to these, who 
maintain that education is an universal interest with 
which the State has everything to do, for which it 
should generously provide through all the grades even 
to the highest, and should throw freely open to all 
comers without charge. Neither of these parties is 
numerous relatively to the population ; but the one last 
named is locally very strong, and its views are practically 
illustrated in the permanent maintenance of the only ab- 
solutely free college in the world, which is also the most 
largely attended institution of its name in the State of 
New York. The common opinion lies somewhere between 
the extremes here indicated ; if it is proper to say that 
there is any common opinion where there is no agreement 



as to the point up to which the obligation of the State ex- 
tends, or as to the limit beyond which it cannot be 
pressed. 

This great diversity of views indicates the absence of 
any general recognition of the fact that there are settled 
principles to which the question at issue may be referred, 
and by which the extent of the obligation of the govern- 
ment to maintain education may be ascertained. The 
discussions which take place upon the subject scarcely in 
the least involve these ultimate principles, but are almost 
exclusively concerned with the immediate effects of edu- 
cation as making the individual a better man, and there- 
fore by inference a better citizen. In this form the 
argument is necessarily inconclusive, because it proves 
too much. It proves as well that we should have free 
national universities and free state colleges, as that we 
should have free common schools. Because the pros- 
perity of a community is dependent on the general intel- 
ligence of its members, because educated men become 
naturally the leaders of society, because the exclusion of 
the poor from the higher education handicaps them un- 
fairly in the race of life, because the largest education 
freely offered is the only means by which the genius lurk- 
ing in the humbler ranks of society can surely be detected 
and developed and made serviceable — these are all ap- 
parently potent reasons why opportunities for the highest 
culture should be freely open to all. 

But these arguments are just as applicable to special, 
technical, or professional education, as to that which is 
called general or liberal, and perhaps even more so. When 
we say that the prosperity of a people is dependent on its 
general intelligence, we mean that it is indirectly oi' re- 
motely so dependent. But between the same prosperity 



10 

and the condition of the mechanic arts among the same 
people, the connection is immediate and direct. And if, 
in regard to general cultnre, it is an unjust discrimination 
to deny to the indigent the opportunities enjoyed by their 
more fortunate fellow-citizens, why not equally so to close 
against them the avenues to the scientific and learned pro- 
fessions 1 Every argument in this category which can be 
urged in favor of opening literary colleges at the public 
expense free to all comers, can be advanced with equal 
propriety in favor of similarly opening free schools of agri- 
culture and the mechanic arts, free schools of engineer- 
ing, metallurgy, chemical analysis, and other branches 
of technology, and finally free schools of law, medicine, 
and why not even theology ? 

In reference to agriculture and the mechanic arts, the 
arguments have been so used, if not as yet pushed to their 
logical limit ; for Congress has been called upon to con- 
tribute largely to the endowment of such schools in every 
state, and has liberally responded to the call. It does not 
follow that because Congress has done this, its action has 
been wise. As to that I say nothing ; but merely re- 
mark in passing that the considerations which induced 
this legislation were not probably those large and liberal 
ones I have above suggested — considerations which 
should logically lead to the endowment just as freely of 
schools for lawyers and engineers as of schools for 
mechanics and farmers — but the fact that there are, as 
politicians are quite well aware, a great many mechanics 
and a great many farmers in the country, and not by any 
means as many engineers or lawj^ers. 

If government has a duty in the, case, this duty should 
rest on logical grounds which admit of being distinctly 
stated. 



11 

The objects for which governments are constituted are 
few and simple. They are : 

1. To provide for the common defence. 

2. To protect the citizen in his rights of person and 
property. 

3. To furnish him security in the peaceful prosecution 
of his chosen pursuit. 

4. To institute tribunals for the administration of jus- 
tice. 

5. To treat with other governments, and to adjust ques- 
tions which may arise with such, amicably or by force. 

Strictly speaking, only such operations or measures of 
government are legitimate, which are promotive, more or 
less directly, of the objects here enumerated. But as 
governments are supreme, and as rulers are usually in- 
clined to take a liberal view of the extent of their powers, 
it happens that many governmental acts occur which 
would not bear the application of this severe test. Our 
Constitution, which authorizes Congress to raise money by 
taxation, authorizes also the expenditure of the same, in 
the first place, for objects specifically defined ; and 
secondly, for such others undefined as may be deemed 
promotive of the general welfare. This clause, which 
has been very freely interpreted, can be properly con- 
strued only in reference to that rule unwritten in the con- 
stitution, and which is a law of reason antecedent to and 
above the constitution, which limits representative gov- 
ernment to measures properly promotive of the objects 
for which governments are instituted. To understand 
" the general welfare" in any other sense, is to open the 
door to possibilities of the most dangerous character. It 
would doubtless be promotive of the general welfare, if 
every man could be provided with constant and remuner- 
ative employment ; or, failing that, with a pension suflS- 



12 

cient to maintain Mm in comfort ; but it is not the busi- 
ness of the State to see after this, because such provisions 
have nothing to do with the objects for which govern- 
ments properly exist. There are some among oui' coun- 
trymen, and many in other countries, who believe that it 
would be promotive of the general welfare, if all great 
business enterprises requiring large capital and the union 
of resources should be undertaken by the State, and all 
corporations rigidly prohibited. Others believe this doc- 
trine to be a great mistake ; but it is really a matter of 
no consequence whether that is true or not, since it does 
not fall within the legitimate province of the government 
to do any such thing. In some parts of our country 
popular opinion leans strongly to the belief that the gen- 
eral welfare would be prodigiously promoted by an un- 
limited issue of irredeemable legal tender notes, and a 
disuse of all money in the form of coin. We need not 
discuss the reasonableness of this belief in order to arrive 
at the conclusion, on the other hand, that the government 
ought not to do the thing demanded ; because such an 
act would self -evidently be in conflict with that duty of 
the government which requires it to protect the rights of 
property, and to maintain, or at least do nothing to im- 
pair, the steadiness of values, which would be greatly 
menaced by such a proceeding. 

In order therefore to demonstrate the duty of the State 
to provide for the education of the people, it is not 
enough to allege that such, provision must necessarily be 
promotive of the general welfare. It is necessary to show 
further that such provision conduces in some important 
degree to the accomplishment of the proper objects of 
government. 

Now in order to the most sati sfactory accomplishment 
of these objects, it will not be questioned that the largest 



13 



knowledge and the liigliest mental cultivation are to be 
desired, and ouglit if possible to be secured, in the men 
who stand immediately at the head of affairs. But that 
it IS equally essential to good government that the people 
generally should possess similar intelligence and cultiva- 
tion, is not immediately obvious. In states whose rulers 
belong to, or are derived from, a particular and limited 
class, the immediate ends of good government may be 
sufficiently subserved by the education of this particular 
class. But even in such a state, it does not follow that 
the education of the people is likely to be without its use 
to the government, or matter of indifference to it. For it 
is to the interest of autocrats even that the people should 
be content, and therefore that industry should thrive, 
and therefore that the industrial class should be intelli- 
gent. History is full of monitions to this effect, from the 
secessions of the plebeians at Rome down to the commu- 
nistic commotions of the present day. As education is 
promotive of the peace of society, therefore, it is to be ex- 
pected that it will find favor with autocratic governments, 
through the mere instinct of self-preservation. 

But despotic governments find an additional reason for 
promoting the education of the people, in the opportunity 
it affords for guiding and controlling the sentiments, as 
well as of cultivating the intelligence. As the impressions 
made uxDon the mind in early life are the most enduring, 
so the duty of obedience to the monarch and of reverence 
for his representatives may be most effectually inculcated 
among the lessons of the schools. And as governmental 
supervision may also take care that no disturbing ques- 
tions of public policy shall find a place in the system of 
instruction, so it is possible, by a sldlfuUy constructed 
educational scheme, to provide more efficacious safe- 
guards for the stability of political institutions than can 



14 

be found in any system of police. Such an educational 
system affords a capital example of the practical wisdom 
of the policy which prevents the occurrence of evils, over 
that which would restrain or cure them after they have 
occurred. 

To a certain extent under a representative government, 
similar reasons exist why the State should charge itself 
with the education of the young. If there is danger to 
the peace of society arising from the pressure of want 
among the industrial classes, this danger is just as great 
under one form of government as under another. And 
though a system in which the ruler is the elect of the 
people does not make reverence for the person of the chief 
magistrate a duty to be inculcated, it does require rever- 
ence for his office, and for the law of which he is the visible 
embodiment, with no less positiveness ; and in the absence 
of this sentiment, its stability is no less precarious. 

Under a democratic form of government, however, ad- 
ditional reasons present themselves why the citizen 
should be educated, and, if that be possible, well educated. 
Under such a government every great measure of state 
policy must be settled at last by the voice of the people ; 
and it will be settled wisely or unwisely according to the 
degree of the popular intelligence. Such at any rate 
would be the case if the settlement of public questions by 
the popular vote could always be regarded as an expres- 
sion of the popular judgment, and not merely, as to our 
misfortune it often is, of the popular will. The distinc- 
tion is important ; for in many instances, there is reason 
to think, it is not so much the merit of a proposed meas- 
ure that governs what we are accustomed to call the vote 
of the enlightened freeman, as it is the party flag on 
which the measure is inscribed, or the bearing it may 
have upon his section or his neighborhood. 



15 

Many of these questions indeed are of a nature too in- 
tricate to be correctly judged on their merits by the aver- 
age voter, or even by the average well-educated voter. 
According to the abstract theory of republican — that is 
to say, representative — government, they are not to be so 
judged ; nor is it presumed that they will ever be referred 
to the direct arbitrament of the popular vote. This 
theory assumes that the representative is not only to act 
but to think for his constituency. It recognizes as an 
axiom the proposition that statecraft is a science, in which 
no man can be an expert except by dint of much study, 
of thorough knowledge of the experience of the past, and 
large observation of the conditions and needs of the pres- 
ent. According to this view, therefore, questions of state 
policy should be decided by statesmen, precisely as ques- 
tions of law are decided by judges. 

It is accordingly, in this theory, a necessary assumption 
that the representative will be a statesman, or will be as 
near an approach to that character as the community he 
represents affords. He will be one of the few whose 
minds have been enriched by the knowledge, and whose 
faculties have been disciplined by the training, which the 
highest education furnishes. He will probably be 
thoroughly versed in history, and familiar with the prin- 
ciples of public economy and of governmental science. 
He will have been selected by his fellow-citizens because 
of his possession of these qualifications, and because they 
desire to profit by a wisdom which they feel to be supe- 
rior to their own. Finally, he will be maintained with 
some permanence in his prominent position, because the 
reasons which originally placed him there will be rein- 
forced by the consideration that his power of usefulness 
is increased by every year of added experience. In a rep- 
resentative republic theoretically perfect, therefore, the 



16 

business of the State will be as certainly confined to a 
limited number of men fitted by training and' by experi- 
ence for the proper discharge of their duties, as under an 
aristocratic or a monarchical government ; the difference 
only being that, in the republic, the rulers and lawgivers 
hold, their important trust from the free choice of their fel- 
low- citizens, and not by inheritance or asserted divine right. 
But the ideal representative republic is an idea only — 
a mere Utopian dream. It never has had an existence in 
fact ; and so long as human nature continues to be what 
it is, it never can exist. Our own Federal Constitution 
presents us the skeleton outline of such a scheme, of 
which it was intended perhaps to embody the reality. 
Bat so far is it from being true that our representatives 
are selected for their breadth of culture, largeness of 
information, or repute for sound Judgment or elevated 
principle — these characteristics often prejudice rather 
than promote the prospects of a candidate for political 
success. And so far is it from being true that the rep- 
resentative is expected to be guided by his personal con- 
victions, or permitted to exercise his own best judgment 
in the votes he may give upon public questions — his 
course is prescribed to him in advance by a dictatorial 
power which he cannot resist, or resists only at the price 
of his position, and with the certain penalty before him 
of ignominious degradation. So far therefore as the ulti- 
mate decision of questions in our legislative councils by 
majority of voices or by show of hands is concerned, it 
matters not whether our representatives are able or weak, 
well-informed or ill-informed, wise or foolish, eloquent 
or dull ; the practical result is the same, because it has 
been foreshadowed from the moment the counting of the 
ballot-boxes has shown who were the men who were to 
cast the votes. 



4 



17 

The representatives, nevertheless, are not nsnally of the 
weak or the foolish or the dull, nor always (though they 
a.re too often) of the ill-informed. It is not altogether 
matter of indifference to the constituency what manner of 
man shall speak for them in the councils of the State. 
They prefer a strong man because they hope to profit by 
his strength ; they respect intellect, but intellectual inde- 
pendence not at all. What they want in a, representative, 
in short, is an advocate and not a judge. 

The reason of this is not far to seek. Little as the 
debates in our legislative halls may have to do with the 
final disposition of the measures to which they relate, and 
of which, in ninety -nine cases out of the hundred, the 
fate is as perfectly well known before the debate begins 
as after it is over, yet these debates have very much to do 
with the probable constitution of the same legislative 
body after another election. The floods of oratory, there- 
fore,, which periodically deluge the august Houses of 
State and Federal legislation, are not designed or intended 
to impress or convince those upon whom they are directly 
poured out ; but they have their motive in the hope that, 
by their refreshing irrigation, diffused over the broad 
surface of the country, they may nourish into vigor a 
growth of popular opinion favorable to the political 
organization to which the orator belongs. Thus the real 
business in which our legislative bodies are mainly en- 
gaged when they seem to be legislating, is the manage- 
ment of a coming political campaign ; and the noise and 
confusion, apparently signifying nothing, that occupy so 
much of their time, have really an important significancy, 
since they are the mingled sound of the trumpets and of 
the shouting of the captains, stirring up the scattered 
legions to gather for the fray. 

Our actual government, therefore, though republican in 
2 



18 

form, is in its substance a democracy ; differing only from 
a pure democracy in the fact that the Foice of the people 
is expressed not directly but ministerially — that is, by 
the intervention of authorized agents. It is probably 
only owing to the vast magnitude of the body politic, 
and the wide extent of territory over which it is scattered, 
that the ministerial form is not abandoned, and every 
question of public policy submitted at once to popular 
arbitrament, and decided summarily by the popular vote. 
This would be in strict conformity with the spirit which 
has ruled the political world in our country ever since 
the century began ; and which has found its expression 
and produced its practical results in such measures as 
the removal of all the limitations which once existed in 
all the original States to the universality of the suffrage, 
the curtailment of the appointing power, and the sub- 
stitution of popular election for executive discretion in 
the choice of all public officers, including judges of the 
highest grade. Perhaps no more striking example of the 
operation of this spirit can be found than is furnished 
by the complete frustration in practice of the seemingly 
ingenious scheme of the constitution designed to remove 
the choice of a President of the United States to the far- 
thest possible distance from the people, and to intrust it 
to the untrammelled judgment of independent electors 
chosen for their pre-eminent fitness to exercise this high 
responsibility. So careful were the framers of the con- 
stitution to guard against the possibility of bias in the 
minds of these electors, that they inserted into the con- 
stitution a provision disqualifying from the exercise of 
such a function all members of the national legislature, 
and every person holding an oflice of trust or profit under 
the government, no matter how insignificant. Practically 
we know that the electors appointed under this scheme 



19 

are shorn of all independence, and debarred from the 
exercise of any discretion whatever in the casting of their 
ballots. The ticket they are to vote is prescribed to 
them e^en before their own election ; and their action is 
so purely mechanical that it might just as well be dis- 
charged by a convention of ingeniously contrived auto- 
mata. The careful safeguards against bias have no longer 
any significancy ; for no matter what the personal bias 
of the individual elector may be, it cannot in the slightest 
degree influence his official acts. Yet we see the solemn 
farce still maintained of a reverence for forms from which 
the substance has gone out ; and the whole country is 
agitated, and the peace of the union imperilled, in a con- 
troversy over the question whether some particular elec- 
tor, at the time of his nomination, had not held the im- 
portant and lucrative office of village postmaster or dep- 
uty marshal to a federal court. 

If therefore statecraft has not ceased to exist in the 
United States — that is to say, if we have still among us a 
class of men whose profounder knowledge and larger 
wisdom fit them better for the business of legislation and 
the duties of administration than the majority of their 
fellow-citizens — it is safe to say that such science and such 
men do not control the course of our public affairs. Our 
public policy bears the stamp of the average wisdom of 
the people, as it is the expression of their will. 

'Now there are very few of the questions which arise in 
the political arena which are not environed with difl5cul- 
ties. There are few of which a plain man of limited in- 
formation and moderate capacity would be likely to 
arrive independently at the most judicious solution. 
There are few which are not more or less embarrassing to 
the best-educated men, and on which there are not im- 
portant differences of opinion even among those who have 



20 

studied them most profoundly. But the differences of 
experts are differences for which they can assign reasons, 
and in regard to which, by discussion, they may possibly 
arrive at agreement ; while the differences of common 
and ignorant minds are haphazard differences, determined 
sometimes by prejudice, sometimes by blind subservience 
to party, sometimes by self-conceit and the pride of opin- 
ion ; for it is particularly noticeable that men are confi- 
dent of their own judgment in political affairs just in pro- 
portion as their knowledge is less and as their means of 
judging are more imperfect. 

Look at a few of these questions which are continually 
in agitation in one form or another before the public, and 
are in one form or another continually the subjects of de- 
mands for new legislation. We find among them, for ex- 
ample, money and the currency^ taxation, free trade 
and protection, the public credit, the limits of state and 
national sovereignty, internal improveonents, subsidies, 
monopolies, labor and capital, race prejudice, the namga- 
tion laws, free elections, honest elections, and many more. 
Examine any one of these — taxation, for instance. See 
how, under this general question, subordinate questions 
immediately arise : How may taxation be most equitably 
distributed ? Should personal property be taxed ? If so, 
what is personal property ? How shall corporations be 
taxed \ If on their visible property, how about the cer- 
tificates of stock which represent this visible property ? 
Shall mortgaged property be taxed ? If so, shall the 
mortgage be taxed also ? Shall incomes be taxed ? No 
proposition carries with it a stronger prima facie sem- 
blance of equity. But how shall incomes be ascertained ? 
And is the same rule to be applied to a stipend which dies 
with the individual, and to interest on loans or rents of 
real estate, which are practically perj)etual annuities \ 



21 

Also, if real estate under lease is directly taxed as prop- 
erty, should the rent of real estate be a second time taxed 
as income 1 

The question of taxation involves the more complicated 
question of customs-duties. This with all governments is 
a favorite form of taxation, because the burden which 
it imposes is unconsciously borne. The subordinate 
questions which it presents are endless. Considered 
merely as a system of taxation, without regard to its in- 
fluence on other interests, the aim of course should be so 
to adjust the tariff as to raise the largest revenue with the 
least cost for collection, and in the manner least oppres- 
sive to the people. Will this end be accomplished by a 
uniform rate of duty upon all imported commodities ? 
Experience says not. What principle then should govern 
in the discriminations admitted ? Should a heavier im- 
post fall upon the luxuries than upon the necessaries of 
life ? Will not the object be secured just as effectually 
and much more simply by confining taxation to a few 
articles of large but necessary consumption, leaving all 
others free 'i Granting this, should articles capable of 
being so richly productive of revenue as tea and coffee be 
excluded from the list because they are in so general use, 
and in order, to use the language of the philanthropic 
demagogue, to secure to the workingman the blessing of 
"a free breakfast table" ? If for this reason tea and 
coffee are exempt, shall the same reason avail for sugar 
and salt, which seem to be as necessary to the free break- 
fast table as tea and coffee? 

Here we strike the rock. 

We cannot touch the subject of taxation upon importa- 
tions without bringing up another and a larger and a still 
more vexed one — the expediency of excluding the pro- 
ducts of foreign industry from free competition in our 



22 

markets with those of onr own country. It is pleasant to 
talk about a free breakfast table when the tea of China or 
Japan is in question, or the coffee of Java or Rio ; but 
when we speak of the sugar of Havana or the salt of the 
Bahamas, the freedom of the breakfast table suddenly 
loses its interest in Louisiana and ]^ew York. 

What has been said on the subject of taxation is de- 
signed only as an illustration of the difficulty presented by 
the questions of state policy which are constantly in agi- 
tation before the people, and which, under our system of 
government, must be ultimately decided, wisely or un- 
wisely, by the majority of voices. Is it not of the highest 
iniportance that they should not be decided wholly by 
chance or caprice, or by the influence of delusions art- 
fully imposed upon ignorance by designing demagogues ? 
Is it not desirable that the people shall be so educated 
that they may, at least to some extent, understand these 
things, and cast their votes under the dictates of a sober 
judgment and not of a blind impulse ? Moreover, if these 
questions are difficult — confessedly so difficult that even 
the men of largest knowledge are not at one in regard to 
them — is there any degree of education which it is practi- 
cable for the State to enforce upon its citizens, in provid- 
ing for which it would not be directly promoting the 
objects for which governments are constituted '( All 
human wisdom is indeed imperfect, and if it were possible 
that an entire people should be subjected to the highest 
degree of education which it is in fact the privilege only 
of the favored few to enjoy, it does not follow that their 
legislation might not be sometimes mistaken. Grant this, 
yet, in the circumstances supposed, such mistakes would 
be comparatively rare, and minds trained to connect effects 
with causes would soon detect them and apply the neces- 
sary remedies. But a chief benefit of such supposed large 



and general culture would be its power to prevent the 
suggestion, or at least the mischievous propagation, of 
wild and visionary, not to say dangerous and disorganiz- 
ing, political schemes and theories, such as are contin- 
ually disturbing the peace of our country and menacing 
the security of its institutions — schemes and theories 
against which we have constantly to wage an uphill fight, 
chiefly against ignorance, but also against the malignant 
passions that ignorance engenders. An universal culture 
of this high character is of course in the nature of things 
impossible. But when in this world, as is generally the 
case, the suinjnwm honum in any direction is beyond our 
reach, we are not justified in neglecting to do what we 
can to approach it. An imperfect education is better 
than no education at all. Partial information is better 
than total ignorance. And any degree of culture pre- 
pares the mind to receive with greater profit the further 
instruction which may come with experience and observa- 
tion, or through the teachings of the press, or through 
the continual discussions of public questions which are 
always going on before the people between men who have 
made them a study. 

What the State therefore should do for education 
should be limited only by the possibilities which the na- 
ture of the problem presents. The question should not 
be how little it need do, but how much it can do. It 
need do nothing at all, if we want nothing more than that 
there should be a government ; it should omit nothing 
that it is practicable to do, if we desire also that there 
may be a good government. 

We come then to the question. How much can the State 
do for education, and how can it best do it ? 

Before replying, let us first observe that a great deal of 
the knowledge possessed by men in adult life, no matter 



24 

Ilow limited or how extended may have been their educa- 
tion in youth, is self -acquired knowledge. Furthermore, 
much of their power of acquisition — that is, of the facility 
with which they apply their powers to the discovery of 
truth — comes from the discipline of experience, and not 
from that of the schools. It is strictly true, therefore, 
that all men are more or less self-educated ; and that it is 
after all more from the education they owe to themselves, 
than from that which they derive from schools, that the 
degree to which they are able to make themselves felt in 
their generation is due. More than that — even of the 
education they receive from schools, much the greater 
part is their own work. The schools furnish them the 
opportunities for doing this work, and the teachers are 
their guides in doing it ; but that their own agency in the 
result is after all the essential thing, is manifest from the 
fact that these influences operate very differently upon 
different individuals, profiting some very greatly, and 
others hardly at all. 

But to self -education, whether in or out of schools, cer- 
tain elementary instrumentalities are necessary. These 
are written and printed letters and other characters sig- 
nificant of ideas. The ability to rdad opens to the seeker 
after knowledge the accumulated stores of all the centu- 
ries ; and assuming him to have time and disposition, and 
in the outset some judicious guidance in the choice of 
books, iihere is no limit to the extent to which he may push 
his acquisitions. But the danger is, and the probability 
is, that the immature learner, pursuing thus a course of 
independent study, will read superficially, immethodical- 
ly, and without frequently and carefully recalling and 
restating in his own mind the facts of knowledge he has 
acquired. His knowledge is thus liable to become a con- 
fused knowledge, or a half knowledge, incapable, for want 



25 

of precision, of useful application ; and tlie reflex effect of 
his mental labor upon the faculties it calls into exercise, 
will not be likely to promote their vigor, or increase his 
power to concentrate and control them. It is partly to 
prevent these consequences, but chiefly to insure that the 
young, after learning to read, shall read at all — or at 
any rate shall read the books which they ought to read- 
that schools are provided, and that schools are necessary. 
The function of the teacher is to direct the reading, to en- 
force its thoroughness, and to ascertain the resultant 
effects which it leaves in the mind of the learner ; cor- 
recting these where necessary, or putting the pupil in the 
way to correct them himself. For I hold that, in train- 
ing, the business of the preceptor is not so much to teach 
(in the ordinary sense) as to make the child learn. I 
mean by this that when the facts of knowledge which 
the child is expected to acquire are capable of deduction 
from facts he knows already, he should be led to reach 
them through this process of deduction, and not be fur- 
nished with them ready made, as isolated facts^ of infor- 
mation. Nor should the teacher unnecessarily unfold to 
him the successive steps of this deduction. If the 
pupil's powers of analysis and synthesis, of comparison 
and logical arrangement, are ever to be index>endently 
usefiTl, he must begin to use them independently in the 
earliest stages of his education. Hence I am by no 
means disposed invariably to concur in the eulogies I 
hear bestowed upon popular teachers because of their 
pi'actice of making every knotty point in their lessons 
clear to their pupils by copious explanation. I would 
much rather hear of their success in making their pupils 
find their way out of their perplexities, for themselves. 
That a good teacher will possess in a high degree the 
power of clear exposition may be taken for granted ; but 



26 

tliat lie should use this power in order to relieve the 
learner of the wholesome task of self -instruction, is a very 
different and is a very unadvisable thing. In virtue of 
this power, the good teacher will be aware through what 
process of thought his pupil must pass in order to reach 
the conclusion desired ; and his skill as an educator will 
be shown in so presenting the materials as to turn the 
thought in the right direction. 

In speaking thus, I am of course intending my obser- 
vations to apply to that early stage of the educational 
process, where the objective facts of knowledge acquired 
are of less value to the learner than the subjective results 
which attend the process of acquisition. At the later 
stage, at which the purpose is rather to inform than to 
discipline the mind, that teacher is undoubtedly the 
best who is capable of conveying the largest amount of 
information in the most succinct form, and who there- 
fore possesses in the highest degree the power of clear 
exposition. 

To return — since without the knowledge of letters and 
numbers the process of self -education cannot go on, it will 
be questioned by no one who allows the State to have any 
duty in the case, that every citizen should be taught to 
read and write at the public expense. Here, in the view 
of many, the duty of the State is ended. But this sort of 
instruction is not education ; it is providing only the 
implements of education. The objector admits this fact, 
but claims, on the other hand, that when the State puts 
the individual in condition to educate himself, he must 
be himself responsible for the failure if he is not edu- 
cated. More fully stated the contention is as follows : It 
is impossible to compress into the compass of a few brief 
months or years (which is all that, in the case of the av- 
erage citizen, can be giv^en to education) such an amount 



27 

of useful information as may qualifjr an individual to 
understand the various complicated questions which 
arise in political life. If, therefore, such knowledge is to 
be acquired at all, it must be acquired through the pro- 
cesses of self-education ; and when the State has fur- 
nished the citizen with the instrumentalities necessary for 
this, she has done all that can reasonably be demanded. 
His failure to make the acquisition, should he fail, may 
be a misfortune, but this misfortune is not the fault of 
the State. 

Others, looking at the subject in a slightly different 
light, reach the same conclusion by a different process 
of reasoning. The State, they say, imposes on its citizens 
certain duties, and subjects them to certain restraints, all 
of which are expressed in its written laws. Though these 
laws are printed and widely published, their publication 
is of no avail to those who cannot read. It is unjust to 
subject men to penalties for disobedience to laws which 
they know nothing about, and which they have no means 
of knowing. Therefore the State should see to it that 
every citizen is able to read and write ; and then, if any 
one neglects to know what the law is, and infringes its 
provisions through ignorance, his ignorance is criminal, 
and if he suffers in consequence, his suifering is just. 

This argument is defective in several resiDects. If, as 
the argument admits, it is morally wrong to make men 
suffer for violations of laws which they have no means of 
knowing, it does not correct the wrong merely to provide 
the means of knowing, so long as they are sure to con- 
tinue in ignorance that there are any such laws, or that it 
is their duty to know them. In the case of the man who 
cannot read, ignorance of the law is attributable to a ma- 
terial obstacle ; in that of one who can read, but without 
any purposed neglect does not — because, for instance, he 



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30 

monwealtli. In this sense, tlie increase of individual 
efficiency is a public benefit. The joint resultant of the 
increased efficiency of all is to lift a people higher in the 
scale of civilization, to stimulate among them the progress 
of the arts, to diversify and perfect their industries, to 
increase their power of production, and thus to secure for 
them larger material resources, more abundant comfort 
and consequently greater happiness at home, while com- 
manding for them at the same time greater respect 
abroad. Whatever thus contributes to the general pros- 
perity of a people, contributes to its security against 
aggression, and strengthens the hands of its government 
in the discharge of its essential functions, especially of 
that which consists in providing for the common defence. 
But if upon this ground we can argue in favor of ele- 
mentary education, the same reasoning will justify us in 
going much further. If merely to possess the rudiments of 
knowledge, or if only to have command of the implements 
by which knowledge is acquired, is so to increase the 
efficiency of individual industry as sensibly, where such 
knowledge is general, to advance the general prosperity, 
there can be no doubt that every larger acquisition sim- 
ilarly diffused must be attended with analogous results to 
a more marked degree. The ability to read is undoubted- 
ly a valuable accomplishment ; but to read with profit one 
should have some such antecedent knowledge as to enable 
him to read understandingly. What ideas, for example, 
are likely to be gathered from the columns of a daily jour- 
nal by one who is ignorant of the geographical divisions 
of the earth ; of the varieties of climate and production of 
different regions ; of the population, degree of civiliza- 
tion, political importance, and military strength of differ- 
ent nations ; of the forms of government, peculiarities of 
religion, and social institutions prevailing in other lands ; 



31 

of the state of the arts, manufactures and commercial re- 
lations, and the nature of the ruling industries among 
different peoples ; or to what extent is such reading likely 
to profit one to whom Rome is a town in the interior of 
the State of New York, and Waterloo a station on the 
New York Central Railway ; or to whom, finally, the 
names of Shakespeare and Milton, and Napoleon and 
Wellington, and Gladstone and Disraeli, and even per- 
haps Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Jack- 
son are so many unmeaning sounds 1 If individual 
effectiveness depends on individual intelligence, if the 
products of industry are better [and more abundant in 
proportion as the judgment which guides its operations is 
more and more enlightened by cultivation, then it is plain 
that no limit ought to be placed to the extent to which 
the State should provide for the education of every citizen, 
but that which the nature of the problem itself imposes. 
By this I mean to say that we are not to discriminate be- 
tween studies as in their own nature suitable or unsuitable 
to be taught in our schools. No kind of useful knowl- 
edge is unsuitable, if we have room for it. In fact, if the 
potentiality of benefit to the body politic is to be our only 
criterion in judging of the extent proper to be given to 
our teaching, leaving out of view possible differences of 
intrinsic value between different descriptions of knowl- 
edge, then, whether by the term benefit we understand a 
moral or a material benefit, there can be no doubt that 
the advantage relinquished for every subject of study re- 
jected, is greater than that secured by any one of those 
retained. This is true because the benefits of mental cul- 
ture increase in geometrical ratio, while the instrumen- 
talities of such culture are increased only arithmetically ; 
so that, as I have said before, if it were possible that a 
whole people could one and all receive the same high 



32 

mental training which in the actual state of things falls 
to the lot of only the few, the advantage to the State 
would be beyond computation. We are not then to draw 
a line among the various possible subjects of study, and 
say that these are fit and proper by reason of anything in 
their own nature to be taught in our public schools, and 
these are not. If there is to be a selection {smd inexorable 
conditions, such as limitation of the time at command, 
may require this), we may properly indicate an order of 
choice, because some subjects are more directly practical 
than others, and some are auxiliary to all others ; but 
when finally our line is drawn, we must say — these on 
this side we include because we can make room for them ; 
the rest we exclude because unfortunately we cannot. 

If I am asked where such a line should be drawn, I re- 
ply that that is a practical question which could not be 
answered here without going into a detail inappropriate 
to this place. I may suggest, however, one or two gov- 
erning principles which must be borne in mind in drawing 
it. First, the comprehensiveness of the course of instruc- 
tion must bear some due proportion to the time it is to 
occupy. That time should be as great as possible, but 
experience has perhaps settled what is possible in the 
case. The law should fix a minimum time, and up to that 
minimum should make attendance compulsory, specifying 
for this purpose the limiting ages. Secondly, it must be 
borne in mind that, while many things may be taught if 
circumstances allow, some things must be taught. Prac- 
tical utility must here take precedence even of intrinsic 
value. Reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic will 
of course lead all the rest. After these will follow geog- 
raphy, physical, political and statistical ; then the out- 
lines of history, particularly the history of our own coun- 
try. To this I would add a succinct summary of the prin- 



33 

ciples of civil government in its various forms ; but 
cliiefly tliose of our own constitution and the duties of 
tlie citizen under it ; above all the supreme duty, in every 
vote he gives, to vote for principles and not for men. The 
beneficial eifect of the inculcation of this idea in the 
morning of life, before the blood has been heated in the 
excitements of political conflict, would be incalculable. 
There, if I Avere compelled to believe that nothing else 
could be admitted unless to the prejudice of these, I should 
say we must stop. But I believe there is room for much 
more ; and in this belief I would propose to give the child 
some systematic knowledge of the objects by which he is 
surrounded in the natural world — of the elements in short 
of natural history ; of the structure of his own body, and 
the functions of its organs — that is, of anatomy and phys- 
iology ; of the properties of matter, and of the laws of 
force — ^that is, of physics, mechanics, and chemistry. In 
saying this I wish not to be misunderstood. I would not 
of course attempt the absurdity of teaching these vast 
subjects exhaustively. I would confine the ins traction 
to elementary facts which can be definitely stated ; and 
which, besides being practically useful, might serve as a 
foundation on which the learner might build, as oppor- 
tunity should favor, in the future. 

In addition to these subjects, room should also, in my 
view, by all means be made for vocal music, an exercise 
suited to serve rather as a recreation than as a task, and 
by periodically relieving the strain upon the mental pow- 
ers, to quicken their activity while at work. For reasons 
very similar, I would add the art of drawing ; which is 
further recommended by the fact that there is hardly a 
walk of life in which the possession of such an accom- 
plishment is not capable of many useful and valuable 
applications. 



3-i 

I am not, however, proposing a course of common school 
study. I am only specifying subjects which it seems to be 
not impracticable to teach in common schools. Of gram- 
mar I have said • nothing, because I doubt the usefulness 
of synthetic methods in presenting difficult abstractions 
to the minds of the young ; but instead of this I would 
teach the English language, by methods of a practical 
character ; such, for instance, as the construction of sen- 
tences, the comparison of correct and faulty forms of ex- 
pression, practice is epistolary writing, and in simple 
narrative and descriptive composition, and the reading of 
selections from good authors on topics of familiar knowl- 
edge. 

But in any system of instruction, primary or superior, 
it is not enough to prescribe what shall be taught or how 
much shall be taught — the question Jioio these things 
shall be taught is one of even higher importance. By 
this I mean that the benefit derived from schools de- 
pends perhaps even more upon the teacher than upon 
the substance of the teaching. It is an unfortunate fact 
that, in the business of instruction, incompetency may 
conceal itself and inefficiency escape detection more easily 
than in most other employments. It requires no extra- 
ordinary ability nor any great mental effort on the j)art of 
the tutor to assign tasks in text-books, and to go through, 
witli becoming dignity, the process which is called " hear- 
ing recitation." Moreover, in these exercises time may 
be so well filled up as to make it seem that the teacher 
has really contributed something to the progress of his 
pupil, although all that he has done has been to listen to 
a form of words repeated by rote. iSTow a teacher who is 
really a teacher must be a positive force in the educa- 
tional process. And, as I have said before, he must have 
that peculiar skill which shows itself in the power to 



35 

make the pupil think. This with many is a gift of na- 
ture, others acquire it by experience, but all find that it 
is perfected with time. 

One important condition, therefore, of the usefulness 
of the teacher is that he shall be permanent. If I am 
rightly informed, this remark suggests the weak point in 
our system of common school education at this time. 
The position of teacher in the elementary schools is, I am 
told, very generally sought by young persons who are 
conscious of no special aptness for it or predilection to- 
wards it ; who have neither desire nor design to become 
teachers by profession ; who seek this employment, in 
fact, only as a temporary means of subsistence on which 
to rely while they are looking round for something 
better— fitting themselves perhaps for professional life, 
or waiting to make up their minds without motive 
therefore to improve themselves in an art which 
they are not likely to practise long enough to make 
improvement an object; and with every temptation 
to lapse into a dull routine and rest contented in a per- 
functory discharge of duty. This is a serious evil. It 
ought to be prevented if possible. There might perhaps 
be a rule to prohibit the engagement of persons as teach- 
ers, who make no secret of their intention not in any 
proper sense to be teachers. I fear, however, that the 
evil lies too deep to be reached by such a rule, or by any 
mere rule of administration. I fear that the real diffi- 
culty in- the case, when looked into, will be found in the 
inadequacy of the compensation which the teachers in 
general in our common schools receive. No man of abil- 
ity can be expected to give up the best years of his life 
to an occupation by which he barely lives, and which, 
however long and faithfully he may serve in it, holds out 
no promise that he shall ever live any better. If we 



36 

would have permanent teachers we must j)ay for perma- 
nence, just as, if we would have good teachers, we must 
pay for excellence. In the educational no less than in 
the commercial world, equivalency of values must be the 
rule of all exchanges. The fact that in our common 
schools — I do not say invariably and everywhere, but in 
many places and often — the teacher is less liberally remu- 
nerated (and this not relatively, regard being had to the 
quality and dignity of the labor, and the time and cost 
of educating the laborer to his work, but positively in the 
actual amount of dollars and cents paid over and received) 
than journeyman carpenters, bricklayers, paviors, and 
stone masons in the city of New York, is a fact which 
draws after it its inevitable consequences, inferiority of 
qualification, lack of zeal, perpetual change. 

I think it quite certain that no class of public servants 
—taken, I mean, as a class ; there are no doubt excep- 
tional cases — are so ill- compensated as teachers. No 
class, on the other hand, render services of higher value 
to the public ; nor is there any class whose competency, 
whose efiiciency, whose fidelity, and whose devotion to 
their work more deeply concern the public. If liberal 
compensation is necessary to secure the services of good 
and capable men as educators of the children of the 
people, then such liberality is an infinitely higher benefit 
to the public that pays than to the individuals who re- 
ceive the pay. For it is not only a dictate of common 
sense, but a truth deduced from the experience of all 
time, that no investment pays more richly than that 
which makes its return in the treasures of cultivated in- 
tellect. Were I then asked to say in what manner, in my 
opinion, a people could most strikingly illustrate the 
economical policy which consists in saving the pence at 



3Y 

tlie expense of the iDonnds, I slionld answer — by starving 
the teachers of their childi-en. 

But supposing that the State leaves ns nothing to com- 
plain of on the score of liberality, what shall be our 
security that its munificence may not be misapplied — that 
is to say, assuming the provisions to be quite adequate 
to command the best talents and the highest attainments, 
how shall we guard against the danger that inferior men 
may after all secure the benefit of these provisions ? No 
teacher in any educational institution, from the highest 
to the lowest, ought to be engaged, unless upon satisfac- 
tory testimonials from competent authorities ; or unless, 
in rare instances, upon the still more satisfactory evi- 
dence of established celebrity. For our common schools 
this xjoint has been carefully guarded by the provisions 
of our existing laws. Local officers, styled commission- 
ers, elected by the people, are charged with the duty of 
testing the qualifications of candidates for appointment. 
The certificate of the commissioner is evidence of the 
eligibility of the candidate. The system is simple ; it 
ought to be sufficient ; but if I am correctly informed, it 
has one point of weakness. The tenure by which the 
commissioner holds his office is a source of embarrass- 
ment, and makes him liable to a kind of j)ressure which 
interferes with his independence. If he is rigorously 
conscientious, he is liable to be undermined and dis- 
placed to make room for some one less scrupulous. The 
result is that his certificates are sometimes wrung from 
him in cases where his judgment tells him they are un- 
deserved ; and the security intended by the law breaks 
down. It is true we have a chief of the Department, or 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who might, 
if he pleased, enforce upon his subordinates the exercise 
of a rigor which, in the absence of such support, they 



38 

hesitate to employ ; but unfortunately the state superin- 
tendent is liamjpered by similar influences, and subject to 
the same dangers. 

What is wanted is that this matter should be placed in 
the control of some intelligent and permanent body of 
men, having the independence that permanence in office 
only can insure ; a body serving without emolument, and 
therefore disinterested ; a body well educated and con- 
versant with the business of education, and therefore 
entirely competent ; a body composed of men of high 
character and distinguished eminence, and therefore pos- 
sessing something of the dignity and commanding some- 
thing like the respect which is accorded to judges on the 
bench. Certainly if, in the administration of justice, it is 
desirable that there shall be some assurance of perma- 
nence, some security for independence, some immunity 
from the disturbances of factious agitation, some distance 
of removal from the arena of jDopular excitements, some 
exemption from the hazards that wait on popular caxjrice, 
all these things are quite as desirable in the management 
and direction of a process so momentous in its objects, so 
complicated in its machinery, so widely extended in its 
operations, and so universal in the interests it involves, 
as the education of a people. In the organization of 
such a directing body, permanence next to respectabili- 
ty is the characteristic which takes precedence in impor- 
tance of every other ; for in educational matters a policy 
which may not be absolutely the best, if steadily and 
consistently pursued is better than one which is always 
changing, whatever may be the merit of its successive 
phases. To change a policy from year to year is as bad 
as to change text-books from year to year ; a practice 
undeniably bad, though each new book may be better 
than the one discarded ; and bad for the reason that we 



39 

do not after all want to teach books bnt snbjects, and it 
is quite possible to teach subjects, and teach them well, 
without any books at all. That the doctrine here affirmed 
is in accordance with the common sense of mankind, is 
manifest from the example of the higher institutions of 
learning ; of which all without any exception are placed 
under the administration of supervisory boards whose 
members hold their places in permanence, or of Avhich 
the changes are so gradual as to be practically insensible. 

The Board of Regents of this University is x>recisely 
such a body as I have had in mind in these remarks. It 
is a body already in existence ; its organic law insures its 
permanence ; it is composed of precisely the right kind 
of men, thoroughly educated, conversant with educational 
affairs, personally and justly eminent, and by long experi- 
ence in the supervision of the superior education of the 
State familiar mth all the practical details of administra- 
tive duty. To extend its care to the primary education 
also would be to introduce unity in place of diversity, and 
to consolidate the entire educational system of the State 
into one complete and perfect whole. 

Nor in making this change would it be necessary that 
the present organization of the common school system 
should be in any essential particular changed. Let the 
organization stand, but transfer simply to the Hegents 
the authority to appoint the functionaries who now re- 
ceive office from the Legislature or from local constituen- 
cies. Let the Regents prescribe the tests to which aspi- 
rant teachers shall be subjected. Let the commission- 
ers appointed by them a]3ply these tests, as they will 
then be able to do, fearlessly and independently, and the 
evils which have been signalized as inseparable from the 
system in its present form, will at once disapxDear. 

How far the proposition here made may be acceptable 



40 

to this Board of Regents, I have not inqnked and am un- 
advised. Should it be thought to increase too largely 
the burden of their responsibility, there remains the alter- 
native exjDedient of creating another and iDarallel body, 
a State Board of Education, for examx^le, having the 
same relation to the system of primary education which 
the Board of Regents sustains to the secondary and supe- 
rior. To either of these proposals I can see no objection ; 
to the continuance of the present system unmodified I 
can see many. 

I have thus endeavored to present my views as to the 
duty of the State in regard to popular education, resting 
them on what seem to me to be rational and logical 
grounds. Without venturing to anticipate for them uni- 
versal concurrence, I still think that they will find ap- 
proval in the educational, if not in the political, world. 

The subject of the higher education comes next in or- 
der. Recurring to what has been said of the imx^ortance 
to the efficiency of schools of well qualified teachers, it is 
hardly necessary to say that to insure the supply of such 
teachers is a matter of precisely equal importance ; nor 
to add that such supiDly cannot be looked for from the el- 
ementary schools themselves. If it is true that the art of 
the teacher consists not so much in imparting information 
as in stimulating thought and guiding the process of 
thinking, then it is true that the accomplished teacher 
must possess a culture much higher than the highest 
level to which he can hope to lift his pupil. In this con- 
sideration we find a suggestion of the necessity, and a jus- 
tification of the policy, of creating institutions for the ex- 
press purpose of forming teachers. This is only to adopt 
in our warfare against ignorance, the most dangerous of 
foes to the progress or even the maintenance of civiliza- 
tion, the same policy which our national government X3ur- 



41 

sues in training up men competent to dii'ect its operations 
of oifence or defence against its foreign enemies. Onr 
state lias not been regardless of its duty in this respect. 
We have numerous admirable examples of the class of 
institutions here indicated. The state has also acted 
wisely in enlisting in the same work the numerous well- 
appointed and ably conducted academies under the super- 
vision of this Board of Regents, by providing for the for- 
mation in these, of classes expressly for the training of 
teachers. These numerous schools of secondary instruc- 
tion, which dot at nearly equal intervals the surface of 
our wide territory, though chiefly the creation of i)rivate 
effort, constitute an element in our educational system of 
inappreciable value. Besides contributing in the manner 
just described to maintain the character of the schools be- 
low, they afford to many thousands of the youth of our 
state, prevented by circumstances from resorting to the 
higher institutions, educational advantages in many cases 
almost equal to those of the colleges themselves ; and 
tlieir influence in elevating the standard of general intel- 
ligence in the State is far-reaching and powerful. They 
fill up all the wide interval between the elementary edu- 
cation which is universal, and the so-called liberal educa- 
tion to which hardly one in two or three thousand 
aspires. In regard to them the State has therefore an im- 
portant duty to fulfil. It should see that they are suffi- 
ciently numerous to be everywhere within reach of the 
people, should contribute to their support so far as is 
necessary to guaranty theii' educational respectability, 
and should so far control their operations and supervise 
their methods as to insure their efficient management. 

In addition to this, though these schools ^vill neces- 
sarily be for the comparatively few, and cannot, there- 
fore, with propriety be made in the ordinary sense free, I 



42 

should esteem it a judicious policy in the State to provide 
that the deserving whom indigence would otherwise debar 
from their benefits, and who aspire to a higher culture 
than they can obtain in the elementary schools, should 
have access to them free of charge — a policy which might 
be wisely extended to the colleges also. 

Toward the institutions of the highest grade, the col- 
leges, the policy of the State must be determined by simi- 
lar considerations. The colleges are necessary to com- 
plete and crown the edifice of the educational system. 
They furnish the teachers to the schools of secondary 
grade, as these last in turn furnish teachers to the pri- 
mary. If therefore no colleges were spontaneously to 
arise, it would be incumbent on the State to create them. 
In general, however, the creation of colleges at the state 
charge, and for distinctly state purposes, is unnecessary. 
But one example, so far as my information extends, ex- 
ists in our country, in which a college established by the 
State is also maintained by the State as a recognized 
organ of the government, by annual appropriations in the 
civil list ; and that is the University, formerly called the 
College, of South Carolina. In most of the states, how- 
ever, which have been formed out of territory once be- 
longing to the United States, state universities exist, lib- 
erally endowed by the Federal Government, and directly 
subject to legislative control. Yale College and Harvard 
University were both created and endowed by the colo- 
nial legislatures of the states to which they respec- 
tively belong ; and till quite recently, in each case, the 
state retained a representation in the supervisory 
board. 

But however it may have been expedient or necessary 
in earlier times to create colleges by State authority and 
by the exercise of state munificence, as an indispensable 



43 

part of the educational macliinery of the State itself, the 
present need seems to be rather to restrain than to foster 
the multiplication of such institutions. We have too 
many colleges, and not too few. The excessive multipli- 
cation of these institutions is not only not a good, but is a 
very positive evil ; because, as the number increases, the 
average strength diminishes, with an effect upon the aver- 
age quality of collegiate instruction as unfortunate as it 
is unavoidable. 

There are some well a,scertained and interesting facts 
bearing on this question which are believed not to be gen- 
erally known. The common impression probably is that 
to multiply the number of colleges in the country in- 
creases correspondingly, or if not correspondingly at 
least to some degree, the number of college students in 
the country. But this is a mistake. Statistics prove it 
to be a total mistake. The aggregate number of students 
attending all the colleges in the country put together, 
bears a pretty steady i^atio to the total population of the 
country, a ratio which remains practically^ unaltered, 
however the number of colleges may vary. Practically 
unaltered, I say, but I am sorry to be obliged to add that 
this statement is not strictly true ; and that, when dis- 
tant periods are compared, the proportion of students to 
population, in spite of the multiplication of colleges in 
the meantime, appears gradually to diminish. 

Taking the country through, the aggregate number of 
students, candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, 
in our colleges, is to the total population of the country, 
nearly in the ratio of one to twenty-five hundred. Less 
than half a century ago it was not far from one to two 
thousand. In half a century the population has in- 
creased nearly fourfold, the number of colleges threefold, 
and the aggregate number of the students in arts in all 



44: 

the colleges put together, but little more than twofold. 
These figures speak for themselves. 

Now colleges are costly establishments, endowed chiefly 
by private munificence ; and liberality in this direction, 
as in every other, has its limit, which cannot be over- 
drawn. Many colleges therefore, being interjDreted, 
means /ee&Ze colleges ; feeble, whether as it respects the 
attendance they can attract, or the material resources they 
can command. 

On the other hand, when the large expenditure has 
been incurred which is necessary to equip properly a col- 
lege for one hundred students, this college may just as 
well receive two hundred ; and but a verj' moderate ad- 
dition to the outlay will suffice to fit it for a thousand, 

]N"ow let us take the present aggregate population of the 
country, irrespective of color, which is probably not be- 
low forty -five millions. At the ratio of one to twenty -five 
hundred, the whole country furnishes at this moment but 
eighteen thousand undergraduate students in arts. How 
many colleges are needed for these % At two hundred stu- 
dents in a college, ninety. At five hundred, which would 
be much better, thirty-six — hardly one to a State. But 
we ha^^e actually more than four hundred. 

The educational statistics from which these inferences 
are drawn are the results of a long continued and labori- 
ous inquiry conducted by myself personally. If a test of 
their trustworthiness is demanded, it may be found in the 
returns made to the Regents of the University from the 
colleges of our own State. It matters not what year we 
select. One will answer as well as another. I choose the 
latest published, the returns for the year 1877, In that 
year the number of male students in arts present in all 
the colleges of the State — sixteen in number — amounted 
in the aggregate to eighteen hundred and fifty-five. But 



45 

assuming the population of the State to be five millions, 
which does not overstate it, the ratio of one to twenty- 
five hundred should give her two thousand. The re- 
turns, I admit, do not take account of the young men 
belonging to our state who may be in attendance in the 
colleges of other states, nor of the probably smaller num- 
ber from other states who are present in ours ; but on 
the other hand they fail likewise to take account of the 
very large proportion of the students enrolled as colle- 
giate students in the College of the City of JN'ew York 
who do not proceed nor intend to proceed to degrees in 
arts, and whose number is much more than sufficient to 
counterbalance any difference against us in the compari- 
son of interstate exchanges. 

If this test proves anything, it proves that the ratio of 
one to twenty -five hundred is too high and not too low. 
This is only to say that it more than confirms the pre- 
viously stated deductions drawn from a more general 
inquiry. 

Some advantages are claimed to result from the multi- 
plication of colleges. It is fair to consider these. The 
first is that, by such multiplication, colleges are brought 
nearer to those who need them, and are reached with less 
expenditure of money and of time. This argument might 
have had weight fifty years ago ; it has very little now. 
If there were but one college in a state, and if every stu- 
dent should attend the college of his own state, hardly 
one anywhere need be separated from his home by twenty- 
four hours. If, on the other hand, a college were pro- 
vided for every two or three hundred students, and if 
these were equidistantly distributed through the country, 
the question of time would cease to have any significance. 
Large as is the present number of our colleges, nine stu- 
dents out^of ten, perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred, have 



46 

to travel to reach them. If we had but one quarter as 
many, the average time of travel would hardly be in- 
creased an hour. 

Another reason of greater weight than the foregoing in 
favor of the multiplication of colleges, or at least of the 
increase of the number beyond the educational necessity, 
is found in the fact that every religious denomination re- 
gards it as a duty, if not an indispensable necessity, to 
provide for the youth of its own persuasion all the 
machinery of the superior education. This sense of 
obligation seems to be not in the least diminished 
by a consideration of the fact that the class-room in- 
struction in all colleges, whether state or denomina- 
tional, is strictly secular. The religious influences ex- 
erted by such colleges, so far as there are any which are 
distinctly definable, result from the observance of pecu- 
liar forms in the daily devotional exercises of the aca- 
demic community, or from the direct inculcation of char- 
acteristic doctrines during public worship, as conducted 
in the college chapel on the Sabbath — that is, from the 
maintenance at college of the same influences to which 
the youth is subject at home. There is, however, some- 
thing more than this, though it is something not so dis- 
tinctly definable. The mysterious force of sympathy 
whereby men, whether young or old, enlisted under a 
common banner, and associated together in numbers, react 
upon each other, encourage each other, confirm and 
strengthen each other in their views, their convictions, 
their aspirations, their zeal, exerts an influence of incal- 
culable power in intensifying the spirit of religious fel- 
lowship. Thus the denominational college benefits the 
denomination which maintains it, not so much by teach- 
ings directed to the understanding, as by more subtile in- 
fluences appealing to the heart. With some of these, how- 



47 

ever, are associated proper theological schools, and these 
are instrumentalities of a more positive character. 

Another cause determining the multiplication of col- 
leges, which is without the same justification, is found in 
the ambition — a very laudable one — of thriving towns to 
build up within themselves all the appliances of the most 
advanced civilization. Public spirit, always a praise- 
worthy sentiment, is sometimes eager to create instrumen- 
talities for good in advance of the necessity ; and when 
once a splendid enterprise has been projected, promising 
honor, eclat^ and perhaps more material benefit, to the 
residents of the locality which its accomplishment is to 
illustrate, the imaginations of a whole community become 
excited, and local pride is stimulated to a degree which 
generally makes the first success comparatively easy. 
The misfortune is that the enthusiasm which is equal to 
the effort of initiating an undertaking of this character, 
seldom suffices to sustain it through the unavoidable diffi- 
culties of succeeding years ; so that a college which owes 
its birth to a generous impulse full of promise and cheer, 
may be destined only to add another to the many already 
existing examples of misplaced generosity and mistaken 
endeavor. 

Now in what I have said of the multiplication of col- 
leges I wish not to be misunderstood. I do not object to 
many colleges because they are many, nor to small col- 
leges because they are small. If they are all equally 
good, and all really good, it matters not, educationally 
speaking, how many there are. We cannot have too 
much of a good thing. But that a college may be a good 
college, it must be well endowed ; for without ample 
resources it can neither possess the instrumentalities 
which are indispensable to thorough instruction, nor 
command the men most competent to use the instrumen- 



48 

talities. " As I have said before, in edncation, as certainly 
as in commerce, qiiality will command its price. 

My objection to the mnltiplication of colleges, there- 
fore, rests upon the economical ground that, since the 
work these institutions have to do, which is a pretty 
definitely ascertainable amount, is the same whether 
there be many or few, the increase of the number, qual- 
ity remaining the same, involves to the public a very 
large and quite unnecessary increase in the cost of doing 
it. But my objection goes further : with an undue mul- 
tiplication of collegiate institutions, the human j)robability 
is that quality will not remain the same. And if it does 
not, then the public suffers not only in an economical 
but also in an educational sense. 

But the evil resulting from this cause would not be so 
serious, if all our colleges were not clothed with univer- 
sity powers. The distinction is one so wholly disregarded 
in this country, that it would seem to be almost unknown. 
Colleges originally grew up as the organs of universities ; 
first to lodge, afterward to lodge and aid in teacliing uni- 
versity students. They had nothing to do with degrees. 
The early continental colleges have chiefly perished ; the 
British survive. They are learned, wealthy and powerful, 
but they cannot confer degrees. Some French collegiate 
schools of more recent erection confer the degree of 
bachelor — no other. 

Now all our colleges are universities. How stands 
their number to the population ? In the east it is bad 
enough. !N"ew York, with her sixteen colleges, has one 
to three hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants ; 
Massachusetts, with her seven, one to two hundred and 
thirty thousand ; Connecticut, with her three, one to 
two hundred thousand ; and Rhode Island, with a total 
population of two hundred and sixty thousand, has one 



4:9 

only. Further west it is much worse. Pennsylvania has 
twenty -nine colleges, or one to about one hundred and 
thirty-five thousand inhabitants ; Illinois has thirty, or 
one to one hundred thousand ; Tennessee, twenty-seven, 
or one to ninety-five thousand ; Indiana and Missouri, 
each twenty -three, or one to ninety thousand ; Ohio, 
thirty-seven, or one to eighty thousand ; and Iowa, 
twenty-one, or one to seventy thousand. 

The total number of colleges in all the states together 
is about four hundred and twenty -five, or one to a little 
more than one hundred thousand. When I say about, I 
mean as nearly as it is possible to find out. One would 
suppose, considering the high grade of these institutions 
— high at least in assumption — that no fact in all statistics 
ought to be more easily ascertainable than the number of 
colleges in the United States ; yet so far is this from be- 
ing the case, that the effort to arrive at the exact truth 
on the subject has bafiled the most x^atient and most per- 
severing industry of every investigator who has ever 
attempted it. What with the uprising of new and hopeful 
enteri)rises on the one hand, and the down-tumbling of 
older (not always old) and rickety concerns on the other, 
the absolute total for any given year is never certain, and 
for any two succeeding years is never the same. If the 
estimated number I have given is too large to-day (and I 
do not think it is), it will probably be too small before 
another year rolls round. 

It is inconceivable that this great multitude of educa- 
tional institutions, all calling themselves by a common 
name, all claiming to be equally the organs of the high- 
est education the country affords, can be all of uniform 
merit, and all equally deserving of the confidence of the 
public. In fact, if we examine the roll of those who attend 
upon their teaching, we shall see that they cannot be ; 



50 

for in very many instances the great mass of the students 
are, in age and in advancement, children, attending what 
is styled a preparatory course ; while a handful, number- 
ing from half a dozen to twenty, are separately classified 
and grouped under what is pretentiously entitled the 
Departinent of Arts. These institutions are in fact 
merely secondary schools, which have been become seized 
with the ambition to add to their dignity by calling them- 
selves colleges. There are, under the care of this Board 
of Regents, some three hundred academies, whose work 
is intrinsically better and of higher grade than that of half 
the institutions included in the list of American colleges 
published by the Bureau of Education at Washington. 

In one of our largest western states, I am informed 
that, under a general law, any seven men who many asso- 
ciate themselves together and raise the pitiful sum of five 
thousand dollars, are authorized to constitute themselves 
a Board of Trustees, organize a college, and proceed to 
confer degrees in arts. The value of a degree conferred 
by such a body may be easily understood. 

Now why should I concern myself, why should you 
concern yourselves, why should any of us concern our- 
selves about this eruption of feeble colleges, sham col- 
leges, often mushroom colleges, breaking out in epidemic 
form all over the surface of the land ? Why not allow 
their founders, if it amuses them, to mimic academic cere- 
monial, and play at the annual manufacture of laureates, 
regular and honorary, without comment and without 
interference % Simply because these laurels, which are 
thus lavishly scattered abroad, are the insignia, or at least 
have hitherto been the insignia, guaranty, stamp and 
attestation of genuine scholarship, awarded by the recog- 
nized representatives of the highest learning. To bestow 
them on so slight an assurance of deserving, to allow them 



51 

to be bestowed by self constituted authorities of no recog- 
nized standing or weight of personal character, is to per- 
vert their intent, debase their value, and utterly destroy 
their significancy. To an American who has been accus- 
tomed to see these distinctions dispensed so lightly, and 
who is not in the least surprised to find, in every twenti- 
eth village he visits, a tribunal, neither august nor awe- 
inspiring, fiiUy empowered to dispense them, it would be 
difficult to conceive or appreciate the value which was 
once attached to an academic degree in the Old World, 
and which clings to it there even yet. During the me- 
diaeval period an academic degree was almost equivalent 
to an order of nobility, or to a decoration bestowed by a 
monarch. We may perhaps be able to conceive the honor 
and deference which the stamp and seal of high erudition 
carried with it, by calling to mind the fact that a very 
little learning, even the mere ability to read and write, 
was sufficient to secure to its possessor exemption from 
the ordinary penalties of the criminal law. 

Degrees were not originally instituted as titular dis- 
tinctions — the purpose which they principally subserve 
at present — -they were certificates of proficiency conveying 
the right, and imposing the duty, to teach in the institu- 
tion conferring them. Hence, as the substance was more 
important than the name, the holder of the certificate, 
was, in the earlier period of the history, invested with no 
title fixed by law, but was called indifi'erently a licen- 
tiate^ a master (viz., of a school), or a doctor — that is to 
say, a teacher. The term Arts is simply the name given 
to the seven subjects of study taught in the schools of 
Charlemagne, and presumed in that day to embrace pretty 
much the whole circle of human knowledge — viz., the 
trimum, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric ; and 
the quadrimum^ of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and 



52 

mnsic. The origin of the term bachelor is nncertain. By 
some it is supposed to be a corruption of the words has 
chevalier^ the lowest order of knighthood, as distinguished 
from the knight banneret ; by others, it is derived from 
the ceremonial of institution, in which a staff {bacilla) 
was placed in the hands of the proficient. As the laurel 
is the traditional emblem of triumph achieved, the recipi- 
ent of the honor was styled haccalaicreaius, or bachelor. 
So far as can be discovered, these names were, for a cen- 
tury or more, used interchangeably ; nor is it clearly 
settled precisely when and how they began to be distinc- 
tive of different orders of privilege ; but after the middle 
of the thirteenth century it is certain that the term bache- 
lor was used to distinguish the imperfect graduate, whose 
authority to teach could only be exercised under the di- 
rection of a licentiate or master ; while the licentiate was 
invested with authority to teach independently. The 
distinction was somewhat similar to that which exists in 
American colleges between professor and tutor. The 
master was simply a licentiate of higher dignity but not 
of higher powers. The licentiate could be promoted to 
the master's degree on demand ; but the promotion was 
attended with expense. There being really no substantial 
difference between these two grades, the universities of 
the more recent centuries have generally disused one or 
the other. In Great Britain the degree of master con- 
tinues to be conferred, but not that of licentiate ; France 
retains licentiate, but has dropped the degree of master. 
The term doctor, originally the synonyme of master, was 
in progress of time confined to the faculties of theology, of 
canon and civil law, and of medicine. It is chiefly from 
its later use as an honorary distinction that it has 
come, in our time, to be reckoned as the highest of the 
degrees in point of dignity. The doctorate in medi- 



53 

cine is an exception to this, for the reason that it has not 
been so nsed. 

From this account of the origin of degrees it will nat- 
urally be inferred that they were not bestowed indiscrim- 
inately even upon proficients. They were conferred only 
on those who desired and designed to teach. Such was 
not the desire or design of the students generally. They 
did not go to the university to get degrees. They went to 
learn. The aggregate number of students in the mediae- 
val universities was prodigious. At Paris, in the thir- 
teenth century, it was no less than thirty thousand ; at 
Oxford at the same time it was equally great ; at Cam- 
bridge, hardly less. These British universities continued, 
down to the end of the sixteenth century, to maintain 
an attendance of fully five thousand each. As to the 
number of graduates, no published statistics are known 
to me except those given by Huber in his history of 
the British universities ; but these throw a great deal of 
light upon the question. He gives the number of bache- 
lors and masters of arts annually made at Cambridge for 
one hundred and sixty years, beginning at a.d. 1500 ; and 
the number of bachelors made annually at Oxford for 
nearly the same period. From these tables I take the 
average of the first sixty years, being a period when the 
average attendance at each of these universities was about 
five thousand. Upon an average, thirty-four bachelors 
were made annually at Oxford and thirtj^-five at Cam- 
bridge, during the period specified. At Cambridge 
twenty- two masters were made annually on an average 
during the same period, and we may fairly infer that the 
average annaal number at Oxford was the same. 

Since then a university of five thousand students pro- 
duced only twenty-two masters of arts per annum, we 
see how it happened that the duty to teach in the same 



54 

imiversity, which accompanied the right to teach con- 
ferred by the degree, admitted of easy fulfilment. The 
multitude of students demanded a multitude of teachers, 
and the annual supply was not in excess of the annual 
demand. But as, in the exercise of this right, the grad- 
uate became ipso facto a member of the governing body, 
and was distinguished by the title Magister Beg ens, it 
was a natural consequence that the degree should become 
an object of desire, as well for the honor as for the privi- 
leges it conveyed ; and hence that the ^number of grad- 
uates should increase. The tables of Huber show that it 
did so ; the average number of masters annually gradu- 
ated at Cambridge about the middle of the seventeenth 
century, being not far from tenfold greater than the cor- 
responding number for the same period of the century 
before — and this although the aggregate undergraduate 
attendance had largely diminished. Hence, in time, 
the supply of teachers began to exceed the demand, and 
numbers were graciously absolved from their obligation. 
The masters thus relieved from duty, and also the regent 
masters when they ceased to teach, were styled Magistri 
non Regentes. Thus it happened that a degree came to 
be, w\\aX it is with us now, simply a title of honor, and an 
attestation of ascertained proficiency in learning and 
superior intellectual culture. 

In the earlier universities the power to grant degrees 
was a concession from the supreme head of the Church. 
Princes who desired to found universities, made applica- 
tion for the privilege to the Pope. At a later period sec- 
ular rulers claimed and exercised this power independ- 
ently. The power of conferring degrees, however, could 
not be self -assumed ; it could only be exercised as a 
grant from the highest authorities of the church or state. 
But neither church nor state were by any means lavish 



65 

in the concession of this important power. Before the 
fifteenth century there were but five universities in all 
Germany, including Austria and Bohemia ; two in Eng- 
land ; and two or three in France. With the progress of 
time the number has increased ; but even at present there 
are but twenty-two German universities, in a population 
of forty-two millions, or about one to two millions ; fif- 
teen in France, with a population of thirty-seven millions," 
or one to two and a half millions ; and four in England, 
with a population of twenty-three millions, or one to five 
and three-quarters millions. Legally there is but one 
university in France, of which the fifteen above named 
are branches, locally styled academies. From an enu- 
meration made in 1860, it appears that, in all Europe, the 
number of universities is one hundred and eleven, in an 
aggregate population of three hundred millions ; giving 
one university to about two and three quarters millions 
of inhabitants. 

These simple statistical facts, without a superadded 
word of comment, abundantly explain how it happens 
that an academic degree possesses a value in the British 
Islands and on the continent of Europe which it has not 
in America. The sources of honor are so few, their char- 
acters are so high, they embody a learning so profound, 
their teachers are in general so celebrated and of so uni- 
versally recognized authority, and finally the tests to 
which they subject aspirants are so rigorous, that a cer- 
tificate of proficiency received from them has a meaning 
that all the world can understand. 

All these advantages we have thrown away. We have 
not only multiplied almost indefinitely these fountains 
of honor, but we have taken no care that, in their com- 
position, they shall either represent learning or command 
reverence. A village parson, a village doctor, and a vil- 



m 

lage lawyer, supported by a banker, a shop -keeper or 
two, a manufactiirer, and perhaps a gentleman farmer, 
constitute very commonly the tribunal who are to dis- 
pense the precious distinctions which the conservative 
wisdom of other times entrusted only to the honored 
hands of those whom universal consent pronounced to be 
the wisest and best. This tribunal, moreover, not merely 
bestows upon the juvenile aspirant to academic honors' 
the customary certificate of his proficiency ; but, passing 
in review before its critical eye the theologians and the 
jurists, and the statesmen, and the men of letters, and 
even the professors of the highest learning themselves, 
strews over the whole surface of the land, with a generos- 
ity as profuse as its discriminations are inscrutable, a 
periodical shower of honorary degrees. 

Can we not do something to remedy this miserable bus- 
iness ? Taking up the other morning one of our leading 
daily journals, my eye fell upon an article entitled " The 
Commencement Season," The editor lamented, as I 
have been lamenting, the degradation which has befallen 
the degrees in arts in our country. He ascribed this de 
plorable fact, as I have ascribed it, to the indefinite mul- 
tiplication of degree-giving institutions, the absence in 
many instances of any kind of guaranty in respect either 
to the thoroughness of their teaching or the learning of 
their teachers, and the absolute certainty that they are 
too often sadly deficient in both these particulars ; and 
he concluded with the observation that, if academic de- 
grees are hereafter to command any respect, it can only 
be secured by writing after the letters which denote the 
distinction, the name of the college conferring it. Even 
that perhaps cannot save them ; for when any significant 
symbol, badge, or token, especially if it have been orig- 
inally of a decorative character, becomes an object of pub- 



67 

lie ridicule and contempt, it cannot be ' restored to the 
favor it has lost, even though covered with the mantle of 
the highest respectability. 

Can we not, then, I repeat, do something to remedy 
this lamentable of things ? There is a remedy — not 
easy of application, perhaps, because, to be effectual, it 
requires the concurrence of many independent wills — but 
a remedy nevertheless if we will adopt it. It is this. 
Let the State reserve to itself the exclusive right of grant- 
ing academic degrees. So far as this right is concerned 
I would, if it were possible, make tabula rasa of the en- 
tire existing system ; that is to say, without interfering 
in the least with the scholastic operations of existing col- 
leges, I would withdraw from all of them the degree- 
giving power, and place them all iipon the same footing 
as the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. But, inasmuch 
as that would be an infringement of vested rights, it 
would be impracticable to do it unless the power were 
voluntarily relinquished. Leave, then, the existing col- 
leges alone, but allow no more to be created with this power. 

Let each state, then, establish for itself a state uni- 
\^ersity, charged with no duty of teaching, but empowered 
to charter teaching colleges, at its discretion, in all the 
faculties ; to prescribe general rules for the conduct of 
these colleges, to exercise supervision over them, to ex- 
amine all candidates for admission to them, and all pro- 
ficients who may be presented by them for degrees ; and, 
finally, to confer those degrees by diploma under the seal 
of the university, setting forth in such diploma the name 
of the college presenting the candidate. As it respects 
existing colleges, though they would retain the right to 
issue diplomas in their own names and under their own 
seals, I would still extend to them the same system of 
examinations, relieving them from the task of testing the 



58 

qualifications of candidates either for admission or for 
graduation. 

The State University, therefore, as I conceive it, 
would be a body possessing powers considerably resem- 
bling those of the University of London ; yet not alto- 
gether, for though, like that university, it would examine 
for degrees, it would not examine all comers indiscrim- 
inately, but only those presented by the colleges. It 
would also be competent to exercise a jurisdiction and 
would be charged with responsibilities which do not 
belong to that at all. 

Were this scheme to be adopted in every State, 
although it might not, except by voluntary surrender, 
diminish the number of our degree-conferring institu- 
tions, it would nevertheless, for all practical purposes, 
reduce this number to thirty-eight. Furthermore, as each 
State University would necessarily be compelled to em- 
ploy a permanent board of professional examiners, who, 
from the dignity and responsibility of their office, would 
naturally be, like those of the University of London, men 
of profound learning and usually men of celebrity, its 
diplomas would all carry with them a stamp of authority 
which is sadly wanting to many of those now issued. 
Under this system, the sound colleges would be distin- 
guished by the uniformity with which their candidates 
would secure approval ; the feeble, unsound, or specious 
would be compelled to strengthen and reform themselves, 
or would be crowded out of the competition. 

Now in this State of New York the actual condition of 
things in our educational system is such as to make very 
easy, and almost to invite, the trial of this experiment. 
We have a State University actually in existence. It pos- 
sesses in a measure the very powers which the scheme 
contemplates, 
% 



59 

It is competent to charter colleges with faculties of 
arts and faculties of medicine, but not with faculties of 
law or faculties of theology. It possesses the right of 
supervision and of visitation, not only over the colleges 
created by itself, but over those previously in existence. 
It has the power to grant, by diploma issued under its 
seal, all such academic degrees as are known to or are 
usually conferred by any incorporated college or univer- 
sity in Europe, except degrees in arts. 

The powers of this institution, therefore, need only to 
be somewhat enlarged, and its duties and responsibilities 
to be somewhat increased, to enable it to fulfil all the 
functions proposed in the scheme I have submitted. As 
to its form, it needs no change. 

Could this plan be adopted in this state only, it is 
hardly too much to hope that the salutary results of the 
example would, in progress of time, lead to the adoption 
of the same plan by sister states ; so that, at a period 
not quite hopelessly distant in the future, the chaos that 
involves the superior education of the country might be 
reduced to some order ; and all its organs and represen- 
tatives might command and deserve the same degree of 
public confidence which is now awarded only to the few. 

The views I have thus presented are not by any means 
new with me. I have entertained them many years. 
When the plan first presented itself to my mind it seemed 
so feasible that, I was sanguine enough to believe, it need 
only be presented to be accepted. I ventured therefore 
with deference to lay it, first of all, as seemed to be most 
fitting, before the zealous friend of education then at the 
head of the University, the late Chancellor Pruyn. 

And here let me pause for a moment, to pay, in passing, 
my feeble but sincere tribute of honor, reverence, and 
affection to the memory of the distinguished public 



m 

servant and estimable man wliose name I have just 
spoken. 

JoHisr Vajst Schaick Lat^sing Peuyn was one of those 
rare and noble specimens of .humanity whom Providence 
sends occasionally into the world to serve as type and 
model of the good citizen. Endowed by nature with a 
generous heart, a clear intellect, a sound understanding, 
a well-balanced judgment, and an instinctively refined 
taste — natural gifts to which a superior education had 
superadded all the advantages which a liberal and 
scholarly culture could bestow— he was admirably fitted 
to fill any position of trust or responsibility in social or 
civic life ; and there was none to which he was called 
which he did not adorn. 

The representative of this city and district in the coun- 
cils of the State and of the nation ; a leading member of 
numerous organizations established under state authority 
or by private association for the promotion of useful or 
benevolent objects ; an energetic man of business, inti- 
mately associated in the direction of financial institutions 
or business corporations wielding vast capital and involv- 
ing in the wisdom of their administration the interests of 
the entire community ; learned and able in his chosen 
profession of the law ; an active, earnest, and most influ- 
ential promoter of education, as well in the local institu- 
tions which received his personal care, as in this Board of 
Regents, of which he was for thirty-three years a member 
and for nearly sixteen its Chancellor and presiding officer, 
and in which his influence stamped its impress upon the 
entire educational system of the State — in every capacity 
he left behind him an honorable record of duty conscien- 
tiously fulfilled, and of substantial practical results suc- 
cessfully accomplished. 

Possessed of an ample fortune, surrounded by every 



61 

object which could minister to the gratification of a re- 
fined taste or a cultivated intellect, generous in the hospi- 
tality with which he welcomed his friends to his elegant 
mansion, lie yet avoided ostentation, and indulged in 
no wasteful extravagance of idle luxury, but in ma,ny 
forms of unseen and silent beneficence contributed freely 
of his abundance to the relief of i)enury and the solace 
of affliction. 

In his personal character he was all that is admirable. 
Severe in integrity and unbending in principle, he was 
also honorable in his impulses, kindly in his disposition, 
gracious in his manner, affable in his address, interesting 
and instructive in his conversation — producing thus upon 
those who met him even only once, an impression that was 
never effaced. 

His religious convictions were earnest and sincere ; yet, 
while he bore constant witness to the faith that was in 
him by his scrupulous observance of all the ordinances of 
the church of which he was a member, there was nothing 
exaggerated in his display of piety. His Christian char- 
acter was indeed in beautiful harmony with the definition 
of the apostle : Pure religion and undefiled before God 
and the Father is this : to visit the fatherless and the 
widow in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted 
from the world. 

Though his strictly political life was by no means the 
largest or most conspicuous portion of his honorable 
career, yet so constantly was he, in one relation or 
another, before the public, that his name was a house- 
hold word in every corner of the State, everywhere fa- 
miliar, and always associated with some good work ; so 
that on the fatal morning when the telegraph announced 
that he had passed away from earth, there was not a cit- 
izen but felt that one of the noblest columns of our civil 



62 

and social fabric had fallen — not one of the thousands 
that had ever met him but felt that he had lost a friend. 

He has passed away from us forever, but his memory 
lives. In this convocation over which he for so many 
years presided, it will be kept forever green. When in 
succeeding years we come together in our annual reunions 
at this capital, we shall still seem to catch the bright smile 
with which he used to greet us, we shall still seem to 
hear the cordial welcome which used to fall so genially 
from his lips. And when again we return to our separate 
fields of labor, his remembrance will accompany us as an 
animating and inspiring influence ; and if ever in our les- 
sons to the young we would impress their tender minds 
with a sense of the beauty of virtue or the grandeur of 
moral rectitude, we shall recount to them the life history 
and point to the noble example of John Y. L. Pruyn, 
the honest man, the generous friend, the untiring philan- 
thropist, the devout Christian, the faithful public ser- 
vant, the pure patriot, the accomplished scholar, the en- 
ergetic man of business — the good citizen. 

Eight years have passed — perhaps ten — since I presented 
my scheme to the late Chancellor, and was so happy as to 
secure from him an expression of his approbation. He 
advised me to lay it before other members of the Board of 
Regents. None seemed to me more likely justly to ap- 
preciate its merits than the able and influential member 
w^ho has since been so worthily called to flll his place, and 
who then represented in part the city of New York in 
the Senate of the State. Senator Benedict was also 
pleased to express his approval of the plan, considered 
abstractly upon its own merits. But his sagacity detected 
an obstacle in the way of its practical success which, I 
confess, had not occurred to me, or which, at any rate, 
had not occurred to me as serious ; it was this : If the 



63 

Regents assume the duty of conducting examinations 
they must have permanent and able examiners ; if they 
have examiners they must pay them ; in order to pay 
them they must have money ; they cannot find money 
unless the Legislature gives it ; and to ask money for the 
purpose from the Legislature would be hardly more 
effectual than to call spirits from the vasty deep. This 
was a point on which the position of the Senator enabled 
him to speak from conviction — it was, I am sure, an un- 
willing conviction, but it was conviction nevertheless — 
and my courage fell. Till now, since that time, I have 
never dared to revive the subject ; but the plan has still 
continued to linger in my mind as the heaii ideal of an 
educational system for our State and country which ought 
to be realized, and which, at some period in the future, I 
would fain hope may be so still. 

And why should it not ? Could the insignificant sum 
necessary to carry this grand scheme into effect in our 
state be better appropriated % Can a state whose material 
wealth is so vast as to be expressible only in thousands 
of millions, hesitate over the exercise of a modest liber- 
ality which is sure to build up for her a fund of intellect- 
ual wealth of a value inestimably greater % 

What, moreover, after all, would be the cost % Ten, 
twenty, possibly twenty-five thousand dollars annually 
— a poll-tax, say, of from two to five mills i)er head upon 
her five millions of inhabitants. This, too, to maintain a 
system of education of which the successful result in a 
single instance may pay her back a hundredfold the ex- 
penditure of a century ! 

But why should we be always asking for a mercenary 
return % and for every miserable coin which we release 
from our reluctant grasp demand a guaranty in advance 
that it shall come back to us again, identically in kind, 



64 

and with usury % Is the dignity of the State worth noth- 
ing 'i Is nothing due to the ra,nk she holds among en- 
lightened peoples \ Should not her institutions be in har- 
mony with the advanced civilization of which she justly 
makes her boast ? I think our people, I think our Legis- 
lature even, when questions are concerned which involve 
the character of the State, do not always dole out their 
bounties with so parsimonious a hand ; and if I did, I 
conld not look around me from the position in which I 
stand, and mark these sumptuous columns, these glow- 
ing frescoes, these gilded mouldings, aiid these sculptured 
capitals, and not feel that I had done them injustice. It 
is impossible, I say to myself, that a legislature and a 
people can rear a monument of architectural splendor so 
magnificent as this, and do it in order, by this sign, to 
typify their greatness, their wealth, their cultivated taste, 
and their spirit of enlightened liberality ; and can yet be 
unconscious how far this gorgeous show falls short, after 
all, of accomplishing its object in the noblest sense ; or 
insensible to the ambition to illustrate their truest dignity 
and greatness, by raising side by side with this grand 
achievement of material art, a monument so far superior 
to it in grandeur, that it shall endure and go on growing 
in beauty and splendor long after these polished stones 
we see around us shall have crumbled into ruin. 

But important changes which require the concurrence 
of many minds, simple though they may be, and desirable 
as they may appear, are rarely accomplished speedily. 
The spirit of conservatism yields slowly even to convic- 
ion ; and conviction, however intense in the individual, 
permeates the social mass as gradually as elevation of 
temperature makes its silent way through a solid which 
has been heated at a single point. 

I look for no sudden success of the scheme I have out- 



65 

lined — hardly for any thing like a general though cautious 
approval. But if, as I believe, it has a substantial basis 
of common sense, it will not fail to find silent favor with 
the thinking few, and through them it will yet recommend 
itself to others beyond ; till, by the slow process of 
diffusion, it shall at length leaven the ^hole lump of pop- 
ular opinion. After that there will be no further trouble 
with legislatures, for legislatures are never sparing of 
money, except when they fear the people. 

It is now ninety-two years since the passage of the act 
" to institute an University within this Btate," under 
which the present organization has been since continuously 
operating . When the full century since it entered upon 
its beneficent work shall have been completed, the event 
will presumably be commemorated by some fitting cere- 
monial. It seems to me that I cannot more appropriately 
conclude this address, to which you have done me the 
honor to listen with a courteous attention which I fear I 
have somewhat abused, than by expressing the fervent 
hope — almost the belief —that on that interesting occasion, 
if not earlier, it may be possible to announce that the 
limitations upon the powers of the University of the State 
of New York, which, during the first century of its exist- 
ence, have so sensibly restricted its usefulness, have been 
at length removed ; and that thenceforth, under its fos- 
tering care and wise supervision, the educational system 
of the State, moulded into a form in which unity of de- 
sign and uniformity of practice shall pervade it through- 
out all its complicated ramifications, may be inspired with 
new life and new vigor, and become, in the succeeding 
centuries, the index, as it is to be the instrumentality, of 
an ever-rising mental culture and an ever-advancing civ- 
ilization. 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE STATE TO PROVIDE FOR THE EDU- 
CATION OF ITS CITIZENS; THE EXTENT OF THE OBLIGA- 
TION ; AND THE GROUNDS ON WHICH IT RESTS. 



EDCCmON AND THE STiTE 



A.Nr A^IDDRESS 



DELIVERKD K?:POKE THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVEKSITT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

AT THEIR FIRST ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, HELD IN THE 

STATE CAPITOL AT ALBANY, 



,TULY lO, 1879, 



FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, S.T.D., LL.D., L.H.D., 

PRETSIDENT OP COI^UMBIA COLLEGE ', 

Member oj the N(tlion<il Academi/ of Scien.ce'i ; Member of the American Philosophical Society , 

A-ssoci'ite Member of the American Academi/ of Arts and Scitncea ; Correttponding 

Member of the Roi/al Society of Sc.iem;ex of IJei/e, Beltjiam ; 

Offiixr of tli.e Lefjion of Honor. 



NEW YORK : 
The S. W. Green Typesetting Machines, 18 Jacob Street. 

1879. 



n!;Hf'!^''Y OF CONGRESS 



030 218 735 6 



